Externship Requirements

Contemporaneous Journal

The student must keep a contemporaneous journal of activities during the externship. It should be in narrative form and should include:

A description of the student's daily work, including the nature of the projects worked on and the student's role in the projects and special assignments.

A specific description of the training and supervision the student is receiving in connection with each project.

Contemporaneous reflections on the manner in which the work relates to the educational goals for the externship.

The manner in which the externship has exposed the student to issues concerning professional responsibility and the role of attorneys.

How the externship has contributed to the student's development of knowledge in particular substantive areas and to the student's professional growth.

These reports must meet the set minimum requirements specified in the course syllabus.

Final Report

At the end of the externship, the student must submit a Final Report on the externship experience.
Generally, the final report should reflect on the externship experience as a whole. Although it may naturally include some repetition with portions of the student's contemporaneous journals, it should be a report that stands on its own and provides an end-of-term retrospective summary of the student's externship experiences and their educational significance. The report should include:

A description of the specific projects the student worked on and the student's role in each project.

The quality and method of supervision provided.

An overall evaluation of the externship.

The student's personal reflections on what he or she learned from the externship.

The significance of the experience toward the student's intellectual and professional development and objectives.

Most important, the report should specifically focus on the student's personal reflections on what he or she learned from the externship, and the significance of the experience toward the student's intellectual and professional development and objectives.

Supervising Attorney Evaluation

The student's supervising attorney at the host organization must submit a formal written evaluation of the student's performance to the Office of Experiential Learning at the end of the externship. This evaluation should detail the work the student has done and the supervisor's evaluation of their work during the time period covered.